First, I believe that the concept shown in the ad is original and creative, but also effective: Like you said in your previous comment, having 60 people gathered toward a single cause and doing the same thing in the ad certainly attracts people’s attention.

However, i still believe that the strategy chosen by Commensal to spread the word could have been done more efficiently…Why?
In this particular ad, I believe that bloggers are not good endorsers based on their lack of credibility (Q2 of your post). Like you said, I will trust you if you talk about e-marketing and technology, but i won’t trust your opinion as regards climate issues. So even if i watch the video on your blog, i won’t post it on my blog, my twitter or my facebook, simply because i did not like it enough to represent it thoughout all the social media where i am present…so Viral Marketing stops here.
Moreover, I believe that a better title could have been chosen for the video: Is it really useful to explain in the title that the video is illustrating “60 bloggeurs québécois”?

My recommendations:
1)Commensal could have used people with more “expert power”, that is, people who know more about the climate issues and that would have been more credible…Why not using bloggers who post articles related to the environment, sustainable development.
2) But doing so would not be enough (actually, just doing so would change nothing). To be fully effective, i believe that the video should have shown the URL address of the company with a sentence such as “Pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur http://www...”. Then, for those who would actually go on Commensal’s website, it should have a special section/page explaining the concept of the video, showing the names of the bloggers who participated to the video as well as links reffering to their blogs (just like you did on this post!), where all the bloggers would then put more detailled information on how to act to solve climate issues.
3) I believe the video would have reached more people if it had been done in English instead of French…First, simply because english is spoken by almost everyone in Canada and even in the rest of the world, which is definitely not the case of French. Second, because like you said, Quebec is way ahead compared to the rest of Canada in terms of educating people to the climate cause…So i believe that Quebecers did not need this video as much as Canadians from other provinces.

Marc

1. To your first question, I would tend to think that this kind of ad is beneficial for both parties. Like you mention, it is an ad for the cause and it is also an ad for the bloggers. However, when Kate Winslet appears in an ad for l’Oréal, we can say that it is an ad for Kate Winslet, as well as an ad for l’Oréal. In this way, they both get some benefits out of it, unless the fit is really bad between the advertisers and the endorser.

2. Your second question is interesting. I personally agree that most viewers don’t really know who these bloggers are, and I think the impact is more at the aggregate-level than at the individual-level. In this way, it is more about the reunion of these bloggers than about these bloggers individually. However, concerning the impact of bloggers on this cause, I am pretty sure it is minimal, since Quebec is way ahead compared to the rest of Canada in terms of educating people to the climate cause.

On one hand, I have to admit that it’s an interesting way to fight for a good cause.
On the other hand, few questions pop into my head (that are linked with your questions) :
– isn’t it a good ad for those bloggers more than for “the planet” ? (the other blogs’ readers will probably want to check out blogs they didn’t know about before)
– as we cannot really recognize those bloggers, will they really have an influence on people in a video ? As you said they might blog about it but beside their blog, their faces are not well known.

It is just questions I ask. And, I don’t alter the fact that bloggers are fighting for an important cause with this video.

Eve

Re: Attractiveness. Ashton Kutcher, Melanie Griffith, and a bunch of models have blogs. Plus you look great in that blue striped sweater.